{"id":57,"date":"2012-11-15T18:18:40","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T02:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.classcrown.com\/blog\/?p=57"},"modified":"2021-11-10T13:02:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T21:02:43","slug":"dont-smile-until-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.classcrown.com\/blog\/dont-smile-until-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Smile Away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin-right: 20px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.classcrown.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/dog_smile1.jpg\" alt=\"Dog Smile\" width=\"250\" height=\"260\" align=\"left\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">My first year of teaching took place in a socio-economically disadvantaged middle school.\u00a0 I was a young, na\u00efve, somewhat privileged middle-class white girl in a diverse school where it was not unheard of to return to your classroom after lunch and open the door only to find that two students were being arrested in your classroom for drug possession. (Yes, this actually happened to me.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I was entirely unprepared for classroom management in this kind of school environment.\u00a0 Naturally, I asked veteran teachers for their advice.\u00a0 One of the most common things I was told was \u201cnot to smile \u2018til Christmas\u201d because you\u2019ve got to \u201cmean business.\u201d\u00a0 At the time I thought perhaps this was good advice because I certainly did want to show my students that I \u201cmeant business,\u201d however amorphous that phrase seemed.\u00a0 But after years of teaching, I\u2019ve determined that a good teacher must certainly smile before Christmas!\u00a0 She should smile from the moment she lets her students enter the classroom on the very first day of school.<\/p>\n<p>My rejection of this popular teacher adage is not meant to deemphasize the importance of having clear expectations and reinforcing them with consequences for poor decision-making; it is simply meant to add that kindness and grace are also important parts of good classroom management.\u00a0 In fact, classroom management experts state that teachers who manage their classroom best are relaxed and emotionally warm (Jones)*.\u00a0 Smiles are common in these classrooms.\u00a0 Students respect good teachers, but they also <em>like <\/em>and <em>connect<\/em> with these teachers.<\/p>\n<p>So go ahead, crack that smile.\u00a0 It might make the classroom a little sunnier as we head toward winter.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10px;\">*Jones, Fred. <span style=\"font-style: italic; font-size: 10px;\">Tools for Teaching.<\/span> Fredric H. Jones and Associates, Inc., 2000.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My first year of teaching took place in a socio-economically disadvantaged middle school.\u00a0 I was a young, na\u00efve, somewhat privileged middle-class white girl in a diverse school where it was not unheard of to return to your classroom after lunch &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classcrown.com\/blog\/dont-smile-until-christmas\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.11 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Smile Away &ndash; ClassCrown - Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.classcrown.com\/blog\/dont-smile-until-christmas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smile Away &ndash; 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